The Price of Blood (11 page)

"Do you do this for a living?"

"What was written on the note?"

"The mobile phone number for a bookie who had a pitch at Gowran Park racecourse today."

"Do you know which bookie that was?"

"Not yet. But I still have the number."

"Anything else you want to tell me?"

"I didn’t want to tell you that."

"If I told Geraghty you’d interfered with the body—worse, you’d stolen evidence—what do you think he’d do?"

"I have an idea what he’d do with me. What would he do with you?"

"He’d probably blame me for knowing you."

"There you are. Not to mention what he’d do if he was told you had given the scene a surreptitious one-two first."

And there we were. He had me, but I had him. MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction, they used to call it when it came to nuclear missiles. Safe as houses, unless one of us actually went mad. Dave wasn’t looking completely sane to me. He topped his coffee up with Jameson, laughing gently and nodding in private agreement with himself. Then he clapped his hands and almost winked.

"So what did you make of this Miranda Hart then Ed? Is she a looker, is she?"

It suddenly occurred to me that Dave might have formed as idealized a picture of my single life as I possibly had of his married one. I threw him a look I was more used to getting from him. The look said:
Cop yourself on, you tool.
It landed right between his eyes and spread crimson across his face.

"All right," I said. "Each man had his tongue cut out. Do we have any other points of comparison?"

"One: they were connected in life, in that Kennedy tried to find Hutton. Must have done a certain amount of digging. Two: they were both killed and mutilated elsewhere, and then cleaned up and deposited where they lay in the past couple of days. Three: they were killed in exactly the same way, strangled by hand and/ or ligature. Four: they were mutilated in the same way, tongue cut out. Five: they each had a small leather bag or purse full of coins."

"Did Kennedy have any tattoos?" I said.

"Not in the obvious places. I didn’t get time to search the whole body. Nothing else was found on him."

"What do you make of the tattoos on Hutton’s forearm?" I said.

Dave shook his head. He had copied them in his notebook. He opened it to that page, and we studied them in silence for a moment.

"Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet," I said. "From alpha to omega: from beginning to end."

"From life to death."

"And the crucifix represents death."

"And life everlasting."

"What do you make of it?"

"I don’t know. A serial killer who’s into symbols and whatdoyoucallit, tarot cards and all this? That’s grand for American films, Ed. In real life, I’d say it’s all my hole."

I almost laughed out loud. That sounded more like the Dave Donnelly I knew, a man who assumed everyone else needed knocking off his perch, and considered himself the man to do it. If he were a T-shirt, it would read: WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK
YOU
ARE? That could have accounted for some of the tension between him and Myles Geraghty: they were both cut from the same cloth. Apart from Dave’s not being a complete and total prick.

"Still, when was the last time you came across a tongue cut out?" I said. "That’s a lot of work, and a lot of mess."

"Not if the victim’s dead first. No blood to speak of then."

"But you take my point? Two in the same day? And both strangled too?"

Dave nodded.

"It’s not rock solid, but it would be a hell of a coincidence if the MO was used by two different killers. And what is there no such thing as?"

"And the fact that they were dumped within a mile or two of each other—does that not suggest the killer’s trying to tell us something?"

"That’s the other thing I’ve never got about those films and all: why the killer wants to tell the cops anything. I mean, if he’s happy being a mad fucker who goes around killing people, why would he want the cops anywhere near him?"

"Because it vindicates him as a person. The artistry of his killing spree is mythologized among the community at large, thus validating his ego. He is the superman, the cops humans every whit as petty and puny as his victims."

Dave was giving me the "cop yourself on, you tool" look. I shrugged.

"Hey, this stuff isn’t just in the movies. These fuckers are real, and they’re out there."

"I know, and it usually goes back to something that happened in childhood. Mammy never bought me a bowwow, boo hoo hoo."

"You know who you sound like, Dave? The man who, after I’d just witnessed a murder-suicide, and been advised that counseling was available to me, told me that what I really needed was a good boot up the arse. Your friend and mine, Myles Geraghty."

Dave reacted as if I’d slapped him; he leapt to his feet and wagged a finger across the table at me, his lips quivering as he attempted to form words and failed, his face red and contorted with rage; then he stormed out of the room. When he came back in a few minutes later, he was shaking his head as if in amazement at the behavior of someone else entirely, our mutual friend with the short temper. He sat and made a show of looking through his notes.

"I’ll tell you this much," Dave said. "Myles Geraghty will go a long way out of his way to avoid bringing this within a country mile of F. X. Tyrrell."

"Why so?"

"Are you kidding? The queue to be F.X.’s best friend in the tent at the Galway Races, you should see it. All the politicians and the big rich. This is the man whose horses beat the Queen’s, for fuck’s sake: this was one of Ireland’s heroes in the dark days when no one had an arse to his trousers: he stuffed the English every Cheltenham, an equestrian IRA man in a morning suit. No one will want Tyrrellscourt anywhere near this."

"And maybe they’ll be right. We’ve got Leo Halligan connected to it, and he’s got form in this area, doesn’t he?"

"Leo’s a bad lad all right. Do you remember him, Ed? He was in our school."

"I know, but he was never there, was he?"

"He was always on the hop all right."

"I remember he went away to reform school for stabbing Christine Doran."

"That was bad."

"He was funny though, wasn’t he? He was a brilliant footballer."

"He was a good footballer. He was a brilliant boxer."

"Fly, wasn’t he?"

"He went up to welter for a while, but he couldn’t keep the weight on."

"It was weird, even though we were all scared of him, everyone kind of liked him, far as I can recall. I did at any rate," I said.

"I wouldn’t say ’like.’ He wasn’t a fucking psycho like Podge, or a slick cunt like George, but yeah, he was…for a dangerous bollocks, he was kind of normal, wasn’t he? How did he pull that off?"

"I think, because you didn’t feel he was gonna take you out for looking at him."

"Yeah. Mind you, Podge would, and then he’d come after you for sorting Podge out."

"Speaking of which. Did you see the Volvo? The RIP?"

"Was that Leo? Of course, there was all this, when he got out, he was gonna get you for sending Podge down. I’d’ve thought it would be a relief to them to have him locked away, he was becoming a liability."

"It all comes down to blood with the Halligans."

Dave looked at his watch.

"Time I headed back to the station, see if we’ve had any calls."

"What’s the story with Vinnie Butler?"

"He’s a Butler," Dave said, as if that were explanation enough. When I shook my head, he expanded, covering pretty much the same territory Tommy Owens had in his voice mail, if in greater detail: the Butlers were a large extended family scattered around north Wicklow and the Dublin border, into all manner of burglary, extortion, fencing and low-level drug dealing. They also spent a great deal of time feuding with each other over a variety of perceived slights and betrayals, real and imagined, one branch of the family doorstepping another with machetes and shotguns and, most recently, a jar of sulfuric acid: Dave told me the young girl whose face the acid was flung in was fifteen and pregnant; she was burned so badly she lost an eye.

"Geraghty set a couple of his boys on him, but I don’t think he was dumping anything more than refuse. State of the body for one thing; Vinnie Butler couldn’t keep
himself
that clean: half an hour in the back of his Transit the corpse would have decomposed. Geraghty’s probably pining for the days of the Branch and the Murder Squad, when they’d have fitted up a gouger like Vinnie for this no bother."

The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation had been formed from the ashes of the Garda Special Branch and the Murder Squad, elite outfits that, like many elite units within the Guards, had quickly become corrupt and unmanageable; they had been disbanded, and then after a decent interval, the NBCI was formed. Geraghty and many of his colleagues had been Branch or Squad men; now stewing with resentment, they were tipped into a Bureau they felt was beneath them but loftily consented to dominate. A lot of Dave’s problems probably stemmed from the tension between the old elite and new officers keen to make a name for themselves.

At the doorway, Dave turned and looked me in the eye.

"All right, Ed?"

"All right, Dave. You?"

It was as if a shadow passed across his face, or rather, as if I’d been squinting in the sun’s glare and was temporarily blinded when it passed behind a cloud: when I could see again, everything had changed. I’d never seen a grown man look so like an anxious, lonely child.

"We’re having some people round tomorrow night, Ed. Christmas Eve. Will you come?"

I was worried Dave might cry if I said no.

   There was a message on my phone from Jackie Tyrrell, very grave and businesslike and, if I hadn’t known otherwise, perfectly sober, asking me to call her urgently, no matter how late. It was half one, which didn’t strike me as especially late, particularly if you were an alcoholic, so I called.

"Ed Loy, about time."

She sounded irritable and impatient, as if it was half four on a Friday afternoon and she was trying to clear her desk for the weekend and I was an employee who knew well what a trial on her patience I had become.

"I want you to come up here at once. I’ve a few things you need to hear."

Her voice had dwindled to a shrill bark. I have the normal portion of resistance to being spoken to like that, plus an extra serving on the side. I said nothing. I could hear her sighing, and then the clink of ice in a moving glass. When she spoke again, it was in a more conciliatory tone, as if there was nothing done that couldn’t be undone with some goodwill and understanding on both sides.

"All right, I’ve been seeing her obsessing about it all, I’ve probably entered the argument at a more heated level than was wise."

"What argument?"

"The whole…look, there is nothing to be gained by raking over the whole business with Patrick Hutton, believe me. It can only cause Miranda needless upset. It happened ten years ago, it’s ancient history, Miranda desperately needs to get on with her life. Let the dead bury the dead."

"That’s interesting. How do you know Patrick Hutton is dead?"

"I don’t. I simply assume…if you vanish off the face of the earth like that, chances are you’re dead. But for all I know, he could be on the Costa del Sol, or in Australia. As good as dead, one way or the other."

I heard the clink of ice in her glass again. I kept silent. She clearly wanted to talk; whether she had anything to tell me remained to be seen.

"Look, I don’t want to talk on the phone. You’d better come up here. You can be trusted, of course."

The last without a glimmer of uncertainty. I could be trusted how? To lie to the cops? To keep rich people’s secrets and carry their bags? To do what I was told, provided the price was right? No harm in letting Jackie Tyrrell believe I was corruptible. As long as she told me all she had to tell.

"Of course," I said.

She gave me directions, I shut up my house and stepped out into the night.

In the car, the first thing I noticed was the smell: French tobacco, Gauloises, or Gitanes, mixed with a lemony aftershave. It seemed to me that I had smelt that combination before. I could always have asked Leo Halligan, but since he held the point of a blade at the back of my neck, I decided now was neither the time nor the place. I looked in the rearview mirror. Leo Halligan, rail thin in a motorcycle jacket and black shirt with dark hair gelled into something not unlike a DA, his dark eyes glittering in a chalk-white face, silver sleeper earrings in both ears, cheekbones like polished knives, thin lips drawn in the mockery of a smile. Tommy had warned me he was coming, but I hadn’t paid enough attention.

"Hello Leo," I said.

"Hello Ed," he said. "No sudden moves now."

He pressed the blade sharply against my neck until the skin broke. There was a little pain and then the unpleasant sensation of blood leaking down my collar.

"Just to show you I’m not fucking around, yeah?" he said. His voice was not exactly camp, but it had a bored, eye-rolling drawl to it, as if he was exhausted dealing with the endless supply of fools and imbeciles sent to annoy him.

"I would have taken that as read," I said.

"Smart. You were always smart, Ed Loy."

"So were you, Leo. Four years for a hit on a nineteen-year-old. That’s a sentencing policy to get concerned citizens onto the streets."

"Alleged eyewitness said he was bullied into making his statement by the Guards. Alibi witness ignored. No forensic evidence."

"So we’re supposed to think you’re innocent?"

"Do I see you in a courtroom, Mr. Justice Loy? I couldn’t give a fuck what you think. Start the car."

"Were you going to wait here all night long?"

"If the lights in the house went out, I would have come in to you."

"It’d be warmer in the house. Do you want to come in?"

"No, I want you to drive. I have a gun as well."

He showed me what looked like a Glock 17 semiautomatic, a gun his brother George favored. Whatever it was, I had to assume it worked.